


As Silver Shines

by the_transparent_wolf



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Fantasy, Knight!Harry, M/M, Mermaid!Eggsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5379638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_transparent_wolf/pseuds/the_transparent_wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eggsy is captured by Harry. Remarks are exchanged, falling in love ensues, hearts ache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Abandon all clinging to historical accuracy, ye who enter.
> 
> This fic was inspired by the mermaid scene in _Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End_. 
> 
> Title is taken from _By The Seaside_ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
> 
> _Like the long waves on a sea-beach,_  
>  _Where the sand as silver shines,_  
>  _With a soft, monotonous cadence,_  
>  _Flow its unrhymed lyric lines;_  
>   
> 
> Feedback is always welcome, be it a comment, critique, or flame. It's how I can improve!

The boy was gazing at him with large, mournful eyes.

Harry rode on without a wayward glance. Behind him, Arthur was speaking to Bors. To peer at the spoils inside the glass tank would be to leer, an affront to the King’s intenerating sensibility, and Harry usually (and shallowly) tried to adhere to the faint boundary of propriety. At the front of the assembly rode Percival, bearing Camelot’s arms on his shield that hung by his side. Deferentially marching on feet behind Percival were the apprentices. ‘Apprentice’ was the title Arthur invented for the prepubescent boys he recruited from families in Camelot and deposited in Percival’s charge.

“Galahad,” nodded Percival.

“Where are we heading?”

“The Normady Fountain should be east of the Travely, almost right next to the mountain. The King wishes to reach the mountain by nightfall.”

It’s been nearly three months since they entrusted Camelot to her magic-infused fortifications, Merlin’s cautious judgement, and the remaining seven knights of the Round Table. Only occasional messages assured the Knights that she hadn’t been plundered in their absence. The scanty legends and half-false riddles surrounding the Grail were so far only true to the marvellous creature carried in a water tank behind Harry, and it probably couldn’t revive the Normady Fountain anyway. Harry did not believe that the Fountain of Youth fed on the tears of the coerced and the bullied; were it so, the legends would be far more copious in number and detail.

By the time they set up camp under a river of stars at the foot of the jagged mountain, with fat rabbits turned over a crackling fire, Arthur had retreated to his tent, and the other knights were preparing to rest for the evening. Harry sat down with his back to the water tank, guarding not the camps, but the tank. Nothing shifted in the water. Not a single flicker of fins. He might have been concerned had the boy not spent the majority of the journey hiding at the bottom of the tank where the debris and dirt had sunken.

The fire dwindled to glowing red logs; no evening breeze ruffled the tents’ hangings; no small wild animals rustled past. The air was still. Harry sensed slight movement behind him.

A pair of green eyes stared from behind the glass panel of the water tank.

Fine, silvery webbing stretched between his fingers, and slowly, the boy’s pale face came to view through the murky water.

When Harry had pinned the mer’s tail to the beach rock with his sword, on the starless night of capture, he had barely seen the creature. There was a great deal of angry hissing and thrashing, which tore the fins further. (Harry wondered that this creature bled red like men.) Now, he looked like a sixteen-year-old human, with gold hair, and a chiselled torso and muscled arms, as elusively beautiful as the amber flame darting about in the depths of fine emeralds. Green eyes blinked once, long matted lashes fluttering on ivory cheeks. The merman did not speak, but his gaze said enough.

Lancelot had cast the iron-woven net over the boy, who, trembling and hissing, was dumped into the water tank, and the iron lid had been locked. What tears that might have been shed during his capture were lost to the sea. Despite the filth obscuring the tank, Harry suspected none has since been shed.

“Do you understand me?” said Harry. The boy watched him with intelligent attentiveness. “Won’t you sleep?”

Harry was rebutted with a huff visible even underwater and a pointed flick of the tail, and the boy returned to sulking at the bottom of the tank.

 

 

“Merlin, are you sure?”

“Yes, Caradoc.”

“I mean, did you double check? Or triple check, that’d be swell.”

“I’m as certain of this as I am about the mer Galahad captured on the coast of Luv Deigo.” Merlin paused, then said sharply, “What was that?”

“Nothing, Merlin.”

“If you have something to say to me—”

“—I’ll whisper it in your ear. Look, Merl, is there a spell you could do to make the water tank lighter?”

Merlin glared from the mirror, “No, sir. Be grateful that it’s iron reinforced.”

“Caradoc!”

“Laters, Merlin.”

“Goodbye, Caradoc. Good luck.”

“Well?” said Arthur impatiently. Galahad sat to the King’s right; then Percival; Lancelot; and Bors to his left.

“We need to head into the mountain,” said Caradoc. “Keep north-east. Merlin says that most of the interior has been altered to obstruct intruders. Even though we are entering with an officious blessing from you-know-who, the mountain is still going to treat us as intruders.”

Arthur looked at the tank contemplatively. “Should we extract its tears here? The Fountain is not so far now. It’ll save us the labour of pulling the tank through the mountain.”

“Merlin advised against extracting merpeople’s tears prematurely,” Harry said before anyone could agree with Arthur. “It won’t stay fresh.”

“Is it still alive?”

“I saw movement in the water last night.”

Arthur told the apprentices to lift the tank. The disturbed water jostled the mer to one end of tank, seeing him flinch from the iron-lined edge seems to satisfy Arthur that he was indeed alive. 

“We’ll take it inside,” said Arthur, unbothered by the murderous scowl on the mer’s face.

Cold air assaulted Harry as he moved into the darkness. The flaming torches of the apprentices adumbrated the weathered sandstone walls that surrounded them in the narrow, winding route into the heart of the mountain. A reverent hush fell over the assembly. Only the rhythmic _tapping_ of hooves and the gentle _swish_ of water inside the tank could be heard, until an apprentice gasped from the front.

“What is it?” asked Bors sharply.

“Look.” 

Percival pointed at the natural mountain wall. only it was no longer a wall. You could catch glimpses of the expanse of the ocean between jagged fissures in the mountain wall, through which shafts of natural light streaked. 

Even the mer appeared, pressing against the glass tank, staring hungrily at the distant sight of home. 

Harry was just thinking that they only need him to somehow break out of the tank to completely disorient this excursion, when one of the apprentices tripped and the whole water tank, for all its iron bars, slid onto the road and smashed against the mountain wall. Water surged out, flooding the little floor space they had, crowding the apprentices against the wall in an attempt to avoid wetting their shoes and alarming the horses to stamping nervously, and around Harry the knights reined in their agitated steeds.

With the water slipped out the lithe form of the mer.

They all stopped in their motions to stare at his flapping, coruscating, silver-green-blue-gold tail, far longer and stronger than human legs, with large translucent fins in a delicate shade of blush. His torso, pale as ivory, was lean and muscled, and glistening with traces of golden scales. Harry has never seen anything so beautiful.

The prospect of the mer asphyxiating transfixed all terrified attention. But as the struggling slowed, his tail was sheathed in silvery tendrils of mist, melting away the scales, until a pair of human legs remained.

“If it has legs, it can walk,” said Arthur.

The boy glared up defiantly over Harry’s shoulder.

Harry looked away from the boy’s slender, unmarked feet. “I’ll carry him, Arthur.”

Those green eyes flickered to Harry, distrust marring hesitation, but he didn’t resist when Harry covered him with his coat and lifted him from the ground. He was cool-skinned but not cold like fish. Three precise lines were cut on the sides of his neck just behind his ear, partially hidden by cropped golden hair. The scent of the ocean clung to his skin and hair, tinged with the pear-like fragrance of the lantana flowers that had burst into bloom over the Luv Deigo sea, deliriously strong when Eggsy pressed against Harry as Mr Pickles whined at the presence of a second person. Harry slowed their pace to adjust for the extra load, trailing to the end of the procession.

“Where’re we going?”

Harry raised an eyebrow at the dirtily accented bastard Latin. “We’re heading north-east to the Normady Fountain.”

“The Fountain of Youth,” said the boy, looking at him with an inscrutable expression.

“Yes.”

“I won’t shed a tear for you.”

“Not for me, for the King.”

A subtle nod towards Arthur. Harry nodded, and the boy revealed his very sharp, very white fangs in the approximation of a grin. “What’s your name, then?”

“Galahad.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“How could you know if it’s a lie?” When the boy’s mouth curled in response, Harry couldn’t resist answering, “Galahad is the title with which I was presented upon knighthood. Do you have a name?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Harry wondered whether the mer were among the creatures blessed with power over names, as Merlin had warned Harry before his departure. To be controlled, manipulated, played by a creature he had hurt and captured wasn’t something Harry looked forward to. “Only if you promised me that you wouldn’t use it for nefarious purposes. Or to escape.”

“I’m not the one wanting to know my name, bruv.”

“And these are my terms to you knowing _my_ name.”

“Fine.” The boy rolled his eyes. “I promise you.”

It was a promise enough, Harry supposed, for the reward. “My name is Harry.”

“Eggsy.”

“Pleased to meet you, Eggsy.”

“Fuck you.”

“Where did you learn such language?” asked Harry mildly.

“Fucking dickheads who come looking for mermaids. As if we could be lured by a fish bait!”

“You _were_ lured by bait,” Harry reminded him. “Just not a fishy one.”

“You don’t see rubies the size of an egg everyday,” said Eggsy defensively. “They looked like puddles of shinning blood in the moonlight. The setting was decent smith-work, and it had some unusual inscriptions on the gold.”

“ _Sola nobilitas virtus._ It is my family’s motto.”

“That was yours?”

“My inheritance as the eldest son.”

“Lucky you.”

“Is he alright, Galahad?”

Lancelot glanced curiously at Eggsy, who, no doubt recalling that she was the one who cast the net, fluffed up with resentment. Harry touched Eggsy’s shoulder.

“I heard you talking to him,” said Lancelot. “How do you know how to speak?”

Eggsy looked at her with a haughty tilt of his chin, “Learnt it.”

“Are those gills?” She pointed at the three cuts on Eggsy’s neck.

This was asking too much information without offering any in return. Eggsy turned his face away, a plain refusal to speak further. Lancelot, to her credit, tried to rekindle the conversation, and when Eggsy didn’t dignify her cooing with a response, she laughed and resumed riding at normal speed, leaving Harry and Eggsy behind.

“Why are _you_ searching for the Fountain?” murmured Eggsy.

It was a question Merlin asked when Harry volunteered as the first knight to accompany Arthur on his quest for the Holy Grail: Harry didn’t seek riches, eternal grace, or everlasting ballads sung to his glory. His family was among the oldest and wealthiest, and blue blood—the bluest in Britain—pulsed in his veins, in a life devoted to the practice and perfection of chivalry. His gracious manners, his refusal to kill gratuitously or exploit those weaker than he, bought him the reputation of nobility. But, perhaps unsung of in ballads, a rebellious streak had developed early in his character and grew into a love of adventure and an issue with authority. Merlin mulled over whether the quest was an exercise in obedience, or, in Kay’s words, just for laughs.

“I thought I might see something extraordinary,” said Harry, eyes twinkling. “I was right.”

Eggsy blinked at him, before realisation crept blushing up his cheeks to the tips of his ears, sweetly fetching.

“I’m not a thing,” said Eggsy.

“No, you’re not,” Harry agreed. “You never were.”

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

By nightfall (from Harry’s sense of time), Arthur ordered camp to be set up by the boulder they’d come across. Being _in_ a mountain, there were no small animals to hunt, so hard bread and water were served as dinner. Eggsy chewed his portion with an inscrutable expression, as though he was trying to decide whether he liked the texture or not. Harry had had to convince Arthur that not only did mer require sustenance, but that iron chains tied around Eggsy’s body weren't necessary. He couldn’t possibly evade detection were he to escape, and since there was no water, he’d have to do it on foot, and recapture would be easy.

Like last night, Harry guarded Eggsy.

“I’m sorry for the iron cuffs,” Harry said gently to a huddled form.

“Fuck you, Harry.” 

Eggsy sounded heartbroken. Hearing Eggsy like that, miserable and young and hurt, bothered Harry terribly.

He glanced around: everyone had retired to their tent. 

“Give me your wrists.”

“What, are you going to tie me up proper now?”

“No, I’ll uncuff you.”

Eggsy gazed at him with suspicious, hopeful eyes. Harry showed him his hands, in one palm lay an iron key. He didn’t miss Eggsy’s wince when the manacles pressed against his wrists as Harry turned the key. With a _click_ , the shackles fell open.

“Thank you,” muttered Eggsy, rubbing his red wrists.

“You’re welcome,” said Harry.

Following Eggsy’s wistful gaze, Harry heard more than saw the distant lapping of the waves. He rarely felt regret for what he has done in service of the King. It was his duty and his privilege to serve Camelot. In the name of her protection, there was little Harry would not do, for it was in the name of her prosperity they, all of the knights, had pledged their loyalty. Yet a prickling of guilt lingered on his conscience. He had no illusions about that nature of Arthur’s desire to conquest the Grail, and normally indulgence in the King’s idiosyncrasies and ideas was encouraged amongst the knights, and possession of the Grail surely would be beneficial to Camelot, spiritually, even if not strictly necessary to her material wellbeing? 

No, Harry thought, holding Grail is akin to housing a bottomless pot of gold. The House of Fendigaid died with its loss of the Grail, its castle burnt and its grounds salted, its sons and brothers and wives butchered, and its daughters raped or enslaved, and the angels did not descend with its celestial army then. Harry was of the private thought that they wouldn’t come to Camelot’s defence either, what with the knights’ two-fingered salute to Upstairs in not only protecting, but employing Merlin as her architect and engineer.

And tonight, before a young man whom he had kidnapped and helped imprisoned—for that was the proper word for his actions—tonight, against the hypnotic wash of the ocean and the longing turn of the boy’s mouth, he wondered whether he’d done the right thing, and whether this quest for the Holy Grail was a fool’s journey.

Mer tears for the Normady Fountain. It sounded like fairytale stuff; Harry believed Eggsy when he said that he wouldn’t shed one tear for Harry, and he didn’t doubt that Eggsy would laugh in the face of Arthur.

What would become of Eggsy, then? 

Chester King had never been known to inherit the mercy of the original Arthur. Eggsy—

“Hey,” said Eggsy. “Are you alright?”

“Am I—?” Disbelief bubbled up like grease, clinging and nauseating. “You’re asking if _I’m_ alright?”

“You looked a bit sick.”

“I’m fine, Eggsy.” Harry searched the boy’s face. “Are you alright?”

“Apart from being nearly a thousand miles from home, with no prospect of going home, trapped here with iron cuffs and fucking _chains_ with you lot on a batshit delusional journey to the Fountain of Youth? Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You think this is delusional?”

“The Fountain of Fucking Youth, Harry. If that’s not delusional I don’t know what is.”

“The legends—”

“Are just that. Poems. Fiction. Fairy-fucking-tale. Humans don’t live forever.”

“Our souls are immortal, and can be saved by Grace.”

“Whatever you say, bruv.”

“You know,” said Harry, unable to suppress a wry smile, “we’re meant to hold that as the Truth.”

“You really think a Big Man up there is judging you for the worth of your actions? That he’s gonna care whether you kill or maul or ravage the right people, the right cities? Get a grip on reality. Mum’s always said it’s a cold world we’re born into, and the best thing you could have is a friend who will look out for your back.”

“Your mother is a wise lady.”

“Yeah, she is,” Eggsy grinned.

“Have you got someone like that?” asked Harry.

Eggsy’s smile dimmed. “I did. My mates, Jamal and Ryan. But they didn’t come with me. The others made a run for it when, well, you remember.”

Silence fell between them at the mention of that night.

“I’m sorry that I hurt you and caught you that night, Eggsy.”

Eggsy’s eyes flickered up. “I’m sorry I was roaming the Luv Deigo coast that night.”

“After we find the Normady Fountain,” said Harry quietly. “I’ll take you home.”

“Sure, Harry.”

“I swear to you.” Brown eyes stared into surprised green eyes. “On my Honour, I swear that you will return home safely.” He took Eggsy’s hand and pressed a chaste kiss upon his knuckles; Eggsy sucked in a breath like he was burnt. 

Harry held Eggsy still. A minute of silence later, someone’s stirring in their tent faded to light snores.

“How much trouble will you be in, if someone sees I’m not in handcuffs?”

“No more than usual,” replied Harry with a twitch of his mouth.

Eggsy has a delightful laugh; it crinkled his eyes and dimpled his cheeks, made him almost angelic, if not dangerously enticing. Harry couldn’t even find it in himself to shush him lest they rouse someone.

“Bors might get the charge of watching you.”

“Is that the guy who always rides by Arthur?”

“He’s Arthur’s favourite.”

Fiddling with a sliver button on the sleeve of Harry’s coat, Eggsy bit his lip, “What will happen to you if you help me escape?”

“That’s not your concern, Eggsy.”

“Fuck you, you don’t get to say that to me! …Do you expect me to weep into the fountain?”

“It would be helpful,” Harry admitted. “But I won’t force you to do anything.”

“I won’t,” said Eggsy. “I can’t. I can’t cry for Arthur.”

“I understand.” Harry touched the boy’s cheek. “Go to sleep, Eggsy.”

Under the starless, moonless evening, Harry tucked Eggsy snugly inside his coat so that Lancelot, when she came to pick up the guard duty, would not see his unchained wrists. 

Harry sat before Eggsy’s sleeping form, with his sheathed sword lying across his lap, dangerously serene, calmly contemplative.

 

 

“Galahad.”

Harry opened his eyes. Lancelot was standing over him with…ah, the iron cuffs.

“I won’t tell,” Lancelot said. “It’s uselessly cruel, anyway.”

“How did you find them?” asked Harry curiously. 

“Well, Eggsy—that is, the mer—he couldn’t quite get the cuffs to lock before I spotted him.”

A prickle of resentment ran through Harry at the thought that Lancelot, over the course of half a night, had managed to learn Eggsy’s name and become friendly enough that she sympathised with his hatred of iron. Though if Harry was being fair, Lancelot was usually kind, when she wasn’t cutting her way through battlefields.

“Come on,” Lancelot offered a hand to him. “Arthur wants us to start extra early. Caradoc says that Arthur thinks we can make it to the Normady Fountain today if we take his shortcut.”

 

* * *

 

“He doesn’t need to be restrained when he is riding with me,” Harry said to Bors.

“If you’re sure,” Bors shrugged, and went away to report to Arthur.

When Harry caught Eggsy watching them from afar, Eggsy didn’t drop his gaze, instead he held up eye contact even as Harry began striding towards him. When he stopped in front of Eggsy, torn between amusement and fondness at his audacity, the boy had the cheek to raise an inquiring eyebrow.

“We’ll probably begin to come across the protection set up around the Grail,” said Harry. “Stay alert to your surroundings.” 

“I was wondering when we would get to the traps.”

Smiling ruefully, Harry helped Eggsy on to Mr Pickles and mounted behind him, drawing the reins, starting at the slow pace of yesterday. They had left behind the brief bliss of natural light and were submerged once more in darkness. Torches were lit and passed around. The utter stillness of the air whispered at the back of Harry’s neck. The thrill of intruding a forbidden, sacred place sharpened in his gut as they turned around a corner, the flickering firelight stretching over the walls, revealing faded murals of the history of the Grail.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're diving off the deep end of made-up mythology here, guz. If the warning on the first chapter didn't faze you, come along for the ride ;)


	3. Chapter 3

Eggsy glanced up at Harry, whose neutral and impassive expression gave not a hint the he was seeing blasphemy on walls so near the Grail. The murals begin with the the carrying of the Grail to Castle Fendigaid. Three winged beings followed him in his wake. Subsequent sections of the wall devoted to the conquest of the Grail Gates were washed in a sepia brown not unlike the colour of aged blood. The largest figure in the murals was presumably the sovereign of the invading army. Seven arms, one grotesquely shaped head, and enormous limbs in proportion to his subjects, with shrouds of clouds at his feet, and an aureola behind his crown, enthroned on a magnificent throne. He directed his army from the apex of the mountain facing the castle, and around him youths and nymphs prostrated with offerings of summer fruits.

By now the path had narrowed to a point where their horses barely fit through, and the knights were forced to ride much closer to one another in a tighter file. Tension threaded through the assembly. Lancelot was surveying her environment with nervous cautiousness; Percival, her mentor, rode ahead with terse shoulders; even Caradoc ceased his banter. Bors kept quiet as usual. Of Arthur, Harry could read nothing.

In the murals, a great ceremony, that of a religious sacrifice, was taking place on the hill of a mountain, where a long procession of white-robed youths stood before the opening of the mountain, and at the head of it, knelt a boy holding a glowing cup painted in gold leaf. In the next scene, a large rectangular vessel of carved ivory and edges trimmed in gold carried on the shoulders of half-naked slaves, ushered by officials robed in white, into the mouth of the mountain. In their wake countless others were kneeling in an endless parade that continued till the painted horizon. 

“Arthur.” Lancelot broke the silence. “You didn’t mention to us that we were breaking into a tomb.”

Harry shifted his gaze from the murals to the front, where the pathway widened to allow a small gathering, dead-ended by a set of double doors.

“We are restoring the Grail,” Arthur answered crisply, “with the blessing of God.”

Twin dragons were etched on those double doors, their magnificent spread skeletal wings extending beyond the perimeters of the door and onto the walls around and above their heads. Percival tested the doors. When they didn’t give, he drew his sword and, raising it above his head, sliced down to the ground. Nothing happened for a moment, but then the doors fell open in a shower of dust and dirt. The natural cavity inside had been modified and enlarged for easier human access, as the knights and their horses were easily accommodated. The walls bore no markings, literal or art.

Suddenly the ground shook. 

Once. 

Twice. 

A deep, organic growl rumbled from underneath the ground, reverberating in their chests and echoing through its echoes off the chamber walls.

The flock of apprentices hurried forward to Percival’s side, desperate to be within some imaginary radius of the knight’s protection. Mr Pickles skittered back and forth with high-pitched whines.

“Don’t squeeze his belly with your knees, Eggsy,” muttered Harry.

“Bit hard not to, bruv.”

Under his direction, Percival’s horse trotted reluctantly towards the long, narrow, winding fissures that had appeared like the bony fingers of a closing fist in their onward path. 

Another longer howl echoed in the chamber: there was definitely a creature beneath the mountain.

“Holy Jesus gracious God,” murmured Caradoc.

Spikes glinting like polished bronze rose from the one of the rifts. As more of it came into view Harry realised that they weren’t spikes, but antlers protruding from the creature’s head. The ground on which the knights’ horses stood was vibrating from the resonance of increasingly frustrated growls, the frightening _crunch_ of stones being broken and shifted by force, and then a pair of yellow eyes opened and focused on them.

“Arthur?” asked Lancelot.

“Kill it,” said Arthur.

Following strict orders had never been an issue for Lancelot. She drew her sword in one fluid motion and hoisted up the shield bearing the arms of Morton. Every knight except for Harry copied her actions.

“Are you disobeying me, Galahad?” said Arthur softly.

Harry considered it for a moment. “No, Arthur. But who will protect the mer?”

“Give him to me.”

It was an order, not a suggestion. Eggsy stared at Harry when he dismounted and led Mr Pickles, with Eggsy astride him, to Arthur. Harry left them by Arthur’s side, knowing that Mr Pickles will take Eggsy to safety if shit truly hits the fan. The King regarded Eggsy with dispassionate interest, as he might examine a specimen of plant or insect, and did nothing more. Harry squeezed Eggsy’s hand before turning and striding towards the head of the dragon.

The dragon had pulled its great claws, one after another, up from the below the fissure, planted them on the ground, and tried to heave itself up from the substratum of the mountain. The entire cave seemed to quiver under its growl. Rocks tumbled down around the knights, echoes of the echoed shrilly rebounded off the walls, yet the ground did not give: the dragon’s belly was stuck in the narrow crater. 

Lancelot threw her dagger which somersaulted through the air and slashed the tender hide above the dragon’s left eye, drawling a high wail as its entire body flailed desperately against the crack. A web of fractures expanded around where the dragon was trapped, deepening and lengthening and widening, until the ground immediately around the dragon crumpled and its great, long body climbed out, and out, and out. 

It looked unlike any other dragon Harry had seen. Its body was long and snake-like and covered in gleaming bronze scales. Its head was massive, sprouting pearly floating tendrils and a pair of antlers that imparted a divine quality to its presence.

Howling to the sky, high and clear and resonantly, it hurled fragments of chains clinging to its tail against the wall.

“Kill the dragon,” said Arthur. “Don’t distract yourselves with the apprentices.”

As though it understood what Arthur said, the dragon snapped angrily, pupils narrowed to black slits in yellow orbs. It raised its front claw, extending wickedly curved talons, and swiped down at the shivering huddle of apprentices.  

Percival’s sword slapped it away. 

Again, and again, Percival deflected the dragon’s clawing, until the dragon roared, and heat steamed out of its nostrils, and it stretched its mouth. Percival leaped off his steed onto the rock where the apprentices cowered and pulled up his shield against the breath of dragon-fire. 

Lancelot threw her spear at the dragon. 

This stopped the dragon, but drew its dangerous glare to Lancelot, and with a low rumble the dragon pushed off the wall against which Percival and the apprentices crowded, and, curling its tail in a snake-like fashion, clawed towards her, snarling breaths of steam. Meredith huffed and back away. 

Harry gripped Caradoc’s hand as Caradoc charged up to the dragon, swinging up onto horseback behind Caradoc. Harry’s sword pierced the dragon’s scales. As it tossed its head, jerking him from the horse, Harry twisted in the air to find purchase on the dragon’s back while dragon-fire sprayed on the knights on the the ground.

No protruding vertebrae or spikes lined the dragon’s back, just a gleaming, seamless coat of scales as slippery as polished copper. Harry hanged onto the hilt of his sword and stabbed a dagger into the scales. Bless Merlin for his gift in weaponry. He lifted himself on the hilts of his sword and dagger, pulled his dagger out, and stabbed in higher. Thus he climbed. The dragon contorted, trying to shake Harry off. When it realised that its front claws were too short to properly scratch its back, it vented its frustration at those it could see.

“Get a move on!” Caradoc yelled at Harry. “We’re being roasted alive! Oh shit—”

The screaming from the apprentices abruptly ceased. Harry could hear Percival swear, which rarely heralded good fortune for his colleagues, and never for those who had invoked his anger. Harry snatched one of the pearly tendrils on the dragon’s head to use as leverage, pulled his sword from where it was embedded in the dragon, swirling it to righten the angle of incision, and plunged the blade into the scales till nearly guard deep. The sharp, tempered steel penetrated scales and hide and flesh. 

Harry lifted his sword, ignoring the scales that crackled and splintered _,_ and drove it into the skull of the dragon. The dragon stumbled to the ground. Harry wrenched out his sword, glossy with membrane and strands of red-white plasma and shards of broken scales. Caradoc stalked to the dragon and finished the job by slicing through the dragon’s head with a fluidity that would have made his late mentor, Gareth, proud. 

They had remained fairly unscathed. Lancelot was slightly singed, attending to Percival who was bleeding from scratches on his face and in his clothes, but Bors was nowhere to be seen.

Caradoc looked up. “Wait, where’s Arthur?” 

Harry didn’t wait.

Maggie whined nervously when Harry swung onto her saddle. 

“I was going to say you’d better take Lancelot’s Meredith. Maggie’s nervous with strangers.” Caradoc sighed. “Go on, then,” he waved his hand at his horse in blessing.

Harry nudged Maggie in the only direction Arthur could have gone. As Harry hadn’t been mauled from limb-to-limb, Mr Pickles wouldn’t have fled to take Eggsy to safety, meaning either Eggsy successfully made a run for it (unlikely, given that Arthur was armed with the iron blade of Excalibur) or Arthur took Eggsy away. While Harry has never posited the same brand of blind faith some of his peers placed in Arthur, he never suspected treachery. Harry, for all his rebelliousness, believed in Arthur’s loyalty to Camelot. Yet Arthur’s route led them directly to the dragons, and Arthur’s cold reaction to it—hardly an reaction at all—in light of his escape hinted inexorably at some knowledge, or plan, or motive he hadn’t shared with his knights. The thought made Harry grimace; Maggie snorted and turned as guided.

The first thing he saw was Bors. Lying supine on the ground, bleeding copiously from the head, his sword was shinning with blood and his armour was battered and broken in places. Harry checked for a pulse; Bors was alive by a barely-there beat of his heart. He tore Bors’s shirt into strips to make makeshift dressing to bandage his head, tied it extra tight, and carried his body to Maggie. She blinked in astonishment when Harry draped Bors over her saddle as securely as he could. 

“Take him back to Caradoc,” Harry told her firmly, ignoring her indignant huff at have coming all this way only to go back.

It was then that Harry realised what he had assumed to be a large stone was in fact the dulled, grey-blue body of a creature that looked eerily like the dragon they’d just slain. Its graceful form, the leonine head with long tendrils and antlers, the hawk-like claws, though immobile and limp, were unmistakably identical in everything but colour. Harry approached it with the weariness of someone who had just seen its twin crawl its way from the substratum of the mountain with bits of chain still dangling from its neck. He needn’t have worried. The dragon’s belly was slashed open crudely, and someone had gone to the trouble to disturb its organs.

By the viscousness of the glistening blood on the floor, Bors couldn’t have been unconscious for long. Bors had stood beside Harry as Percival fought off the dragon’s attacks on the apprentices. He had followed Harry and Caradoc as they charged towards the dragon. When on earth did he leave? 

A sudden echo of a shout vibrated in the cave. _Eggsy_. As the shouting increased in volume, he broke into a run, skidding across puddles of water on stone, emerging into open air outside the concave mouth of the mountain, with the silver sprinkling of rushing water, where he saw Arthur pulling Eggsy by the hair to a raised stone basin. Arthur glanced up, upon seeing Harry, he hit the side of Eggsy’s head with the hilt of Excalibur and tossed him to the ground. Harry’s hand twitched.

Arthur eyed Harry’s sword, “Are you going to raise your sword against me, Galahad?”

“I hope not. What did you tell Bors?”

“Do you recognise this?” 

In Arthur’s palm lay a tiny sphere in which misty blue swirled as though it were alive. In a way it still was, despite the death of its host. Harry raised his brows, unimpressed. “Is this the key to the Fountain that Lady Esme sang of? What else haven’t you told us, Arthur.”

“It was very helpful of you to slay the one that lay beneath the mountain.” Harry was about to say he didn’t kill it by himself, when Arthur asked curiously, “Do you really think Percival and Lancelot and Caradoc so useless as to require your assistance — a team effort, in fact — to slay one, petty, earthly dragon? Galahad.” He didn’t stop Harry as he approached him. “Are you so sure of yourself and your reality?”

“Get to the point, Arthur,” said Harry calmly.

“The mountain is a maze at the centre of which lay the Normady Fountain. When we passed though the corridor, you were separated, to face different things that protected the maze.”

“It was an illusion that we were still together.”

Harry knew that Merlin would have warned them if he had known of the type of defences within the mountain. Surely Merlin hadn’t betrayed them? Which begged the question, how did Arthur know this? ( _And_ , Harry thought in bewilderment, _where did he send Caradoc’s horse, Maggie?_ Was Maggie even real?)

“You would be surprised at how apt one’s mind is at filling in details with some persuasion. Unfortunately, illusions are as dreams are: the slaying had to be done in reality.” Arthur tossed the softly glowing sphere into the stone basin, which hissed and bubbled. “As did the sacrifice of the boys.”

“All this for a cup?”

“The Holy Grail, Galahad. Now, I’m sure you’re concerned for the young mer here. Perhaps you could help us.” Arthur glanced down at Eggsy. “Cry a few tears for me, lad, and you’ll be free to go.”

Eggsy looked hard at Arthur. “Bruv, there are no tears in the world for the likes of you.” He shifted his sincere, earnest eyes to Harry. “Fuck off, Harry.”

“Pity,” Arthur said.

He drew Excalibur from its scabbard. Harry raised his sword.  

“You’d draw your sword for _him_ , Galahad?”

“Let me remind you of our code of chivalry, Arthur.”

The reverberation from the clash of Harry’s sword and Excalibur echoed bell-like in the semi-open cave. Excalibur’s legendary singing in battle was something Harry had only ever heard in ballads and poems, but never heard in real life—until today. The blade was matte and darkened from age, broader than usual, and extraordinarily sharp. Shock from the impact rippled through his arm, even numbed it briefly. The sheer force of Excalibur’s strikes prevented Harry from effectively attacking Arthur. Each time Excalibur swung near he could _feel_ the sharpness of the blade as it sliced through air, until Arthur raised Excalibur over his head and brought it down on Harry’s head. Harry lunged out of the way. Excalibur hit the stone floor instead. A ripple undulated down the length of the chamber, splitting the stone groundwork in half.

In the split second of Arthur’s hesitation to pursue him Harry threw his dagger at Arthur, who deflected it midair with Excalibur, only to meet Harry’s eyes as he swung his sword into Arthur’s shoulder. It was but a precise, angled incision that sliced through the armour covering Arthur’s left shoulder, Harry could sense his blade had gone through flesh and possibly severed a tendon and he stopped short of bone, pulling out to avoid permanent complications. Excalibur met Harry’s second blow with a hollow, resounding ringing. 

“Cease this expedition, Arthur,” Harry advised in a low urgent voice. “Return to Camelot. We need no Holy Grails to prosper and thrive.”

Arthur snarled. “It’s not your decision, Galahad!”

The third head-on clash of their swords fractured the blade of Harry’s sword. Arthur slashed Excalibur across Harry’s cheek, then swivelled his wrist and brought the sword to the jugular, and Harry buried his half-shattered blade into Arthur.

Blood sprayed over Arthur’s face, and spurted from Arthur’s side in a thick, unstopping flow. Arthur threw Harry to the ground, stumbling back; Eggsy rushed forward to catch Harry. Warm blood engulfed Eggsy’s fingers when he tried to press the wound close, but Excalibur cut too deeply, too sharply, the blood wouldn’t stop flowing. It dyed Eggsy’s hands and smeared his ivory arms, matted Harry’s hair, even darkened patches of the coat he’d lent to Eggsy. Eggsy was shaking—no, it was Harry who was trembling. 

“Shit, Harry—oh fucking hell. Harry, what do I do? Tell me what I need to do.”

Mr Pickles shouldn’t be far away. Eggsy can summon him with the whistle Harry pressed into his palm before he left him with Arthur. (Why did he ever leave someone so dear to him with one whom he didn’t wholly trust?) They aren’t far from the Normady Fountain; the silver cascading of water could be heard even in the cave. The live water source should lead Eggsy home.

Eggsy cupped Harry’s cheek. It felt like a benediction, like a gesture of forgiveness, and the thought left Harry tight in his chest. Something cool and round and hard dropped on his face and rolled down and bounced on the stone floor. Harry lifted his face. 

Pearls. Pearls of such lustre that they glowed softly even in the semi-darkness of the cave. Pearls, big and small, spilt across the cracked ground in a constellation.

Ah, of course. 

_Mer tears don’t keep._

“Stay awake, Harry,” pleaded Eggsy, as he laid him gently on the ground. “Please.”

He wanted to tell Eggsy to stop. To leave. To go home, where he would not be hurt, or chained, or injured, and no one could cause him to weep. Harry wished he could protect Eggsy from all the misfortunes and vicissitudes of life, keep him warm and happy and safe, and bear whatever burden the world bore down. Many more things Harry wanted, selfish desires, but he was bleeding out on the wet stone floor inside a literally god-forsaken mountain.

Harry expected no archangels or towing bells to welcome him. But he wasn’t expecting to be drenched in holy water like a demon either—

“Open your mouth, Harry,” Eggsy’s voice murmured. “Just a bit more. There we go, swallow it, once more. Come on, Harry, once more. It’s okay. Arthur’s dead. I made sure. You’re okay.” A silver sigh caressed his cheek. Strong hands stroked his hair. “Who still keeps their word in this day and age? Sir Galahad of Camelot.”

Petal lips pressed against his forehead, his eyelids. 

“Have I died and gone to heaven?” Harry murmured.

“Did you expect to go to heaven?”

“Not really, I was always too skeptical of its existence to go to heaven.”

“You’d better come with me, then. I’ll tell Mum that you rescued me.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, Harry.” Eggsy’s mouth curved against Harry’s skin. “Say the word.”

Compassionate, mesmerising, kind Eggsy. He was everything Harry didn’t deserve, and nothing he could have dreamt of. Harry, who never experienced or aspired to courtly love, who preferred solidarity to the rosiness of the crowd, who took his sword from the stone in the river against the hostile, incredulous stares of his peers. To spend the remainder of his life — or even three summer days — with Eggsy, the contemplation of it filled Harry with bliss.

But it meant leaving behind Camelot, and it was to her that Harry had sworn his life. 

Harry looked at Eggsy’s lovely, enchanting face.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

Eggsy stared at him. Slowly, devastation crumpled his face. Harry ignored the pang in his chest.

“I can’t leave with you, Eggsy.”

Soft breaths ghosted over his own, taking his attention from the gentle back-and-forth swish of the water as Eggsy bobbed ever slightly in the pellucid waters of the Normady Fountain. Golden scales dotted the side of his jaw and his cheekbones. Harry searched every detail to commit to memory. Eggsy might never want to see him again. He swallowed the pain and buried it in his stomach.

“Would you give me a kiss?” whispered Eggsy.

Eggsy’s eyes looked amazingly iridescent up close, he could smell lantana blossoms—

Soft arms around his neck suddenly turned to stone and twisted Harry into the water. Harry felt for something to pull himself up, aquatic weeds slipped through his fingers. Eggsy snarled at him, revealing fangs that looked dangerously sharp underwater, Harry tried to shove him away, Eggsy wrestled, hissing and snapping at his throat, pupils contracted to cat-like slits. Pressure was building in his ears, his nose, couldn’t breathe— Harry grappled for something, anything, when his fingertips touched the familiar hilt of his sword and—

“Harry!”

Harry chocked into consciousness, lay panting for air from adrenaline shock and fear and shock. Familiar, worried green eyes stared into his.

“ _Eggsy._ ” Harry gasped, sitting up, touching Eggsy’s shoulders, still clothed in Harry’s old coat. The solidity of Eggsy’s embrace gradually settled Harry. He no longer smelt cloyingly of lantana but of the salty, raw, temperamental ocean, his hair was soft, and his skin was marble smooth, no hint of scales. Eggsy was shaking as well. His arms tightened around Harry when Harry tried to lean back to ask what was wrong, burrowing into Harry’s chest. 

“I thought you was dead.” Eggsy’s voice, muffled by Harry’s clothes, sounded wet. “The damned cup wouldn’t come up until it had a fucking bowl worth of my tears, then when I used it to scoop some water out of the fountain, like Arthur said, nothing happened. You kept fucking bleeding, Harry.” Eggsy sucked in a shaky breath. “I thought—but then you woke up.”

“I had a bad dream. …Or another illusion.”

A plain gold cup was lying two feet away. It was an ordinary-looking goblet that might grace the table of any lord or knight, with a stem and foot, not quite smoothed to the polished finish now fashionable in the Camelot or bejewelled like Arthur’s cup. Nothing marked it as extraordinary. It didn’t even possess that divine aura surrounding the dragons guarding the mountain or the morbid yet exquisite details of the relief.

“Is that the Holy Grail?” said Eggsy, following Harry’s stare.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Are you going to take it back home?” Eggsy said in a small voice. 

Harry gazed at Eggsy’s open, vulnerable expression, and felt his heart give way. It was somehow harder to reject Eggsy a second time, perhaps because this time Eggsy wasn’t even asking Harry to leave with him, and seemed to foresee that Harry wouldn’t choose him, with a kind of sad resignation that he somehow didn’t merit real consideration. It isn’t fair, Harry thought bitterly, to divide one’s loyalty and heart. It wasn’t merely loyalty to Camelot, either. He still has to face his peers for the murder of the King, high treason by normal standards, complicated by Arthur’s corruption, but a formal trial would be unavoidable. Eggsy may have been the one who struck the killing blow, but it was Harry who raised his sword against Arthur, and it wasn’t ever a question that Harry alone would bear whatever punishment that may be decided. He leant his forehead with Eggsy’s, closing his eyes.

“I gave you my word that you would go home.”

“Fucking hell, Harry, do you think I don’t know what you’re planning? You’re going to offer them your heart on a platter for killing Arthur. And you ain’t even going to explain yourself, are you?”

Harry smiled. “I’m not so self-sacrificing as that, darling. But,” he gripped Eggsy’s hand and held it tightly, “I won’t offer them my heart. My heart is yours, if you want it.”

“Of course I want it.”

“I shall always be at your service, Eggsy.” 

Harry kissed him, put all of his love, sincerity, and reverence into the chaste press of his lips. Eggsy made a soft, broken noise and he kissed back. A single pearl fell into the palm of Harry’s hand, where it glowed from within, like a blushing bride, and Eggsy leant on to Harry’s shoulder, eyes shut tight.

“Keep it,” Eggsy said. Harry closed his hand around the pearl; it was lukewarm and smooth, reassuring.

Harry peppered small, breathy kisses all over Eggsy’s pink cheeks, down his flushed neck. Sensing the clutch of Eggsy’s hand on his shirt, Harry sighed into his darling boy’s golden hair, and closed his eyes as Eggsy nuzzled his ear. He was met with Eggsy’s breathy, parted mouth, who pulled him down with fingers tousled in his hair. 

They broke up at the distant sound of horses.

Harry carried Eggsy to the stream of the Normady Fountain, and lowered him carefully into the water. Eggsy didn’t swim away, though his legs had transmogrified to a long tail, he gazed at Harry firmly, and said, “Don’t you die on me, Harry. I’ll never forgive you.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for updating a day late! This chapter was the toughest to edit and my internet was down from thunderstorms.
> 
> I'm looking a beta, I'll be thrilled if anyone's interested.
> 
> (contact my through Tumblr or email or comments!)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit on 31/12/15: Minor edit & correction, courtesy of the lovely BloodAsh.

Camelot welcomed her knights home with a perfumed rain of flowers and rosemary sprigs, tossed from the hands of maidens leaning out of the windows of the shops and apartments above the main street. Heavy robes of white brocade silk clothed the statutes of the original King, his knights, and consuls that gazed down at the city. White banners flew from the pillars normally decked in Chester King’s colours. Arthur’s ashes and Excalibur, wrapped in soft cloth, were carried by Percival at the head of the cavalcade. At its centre, surrounded by the other knights, acting in part guard and in part comrade, rode Galahad.

When the knights just barely navigated their way out of the mountain with unconscious and still-alive Bors, they had contacted Merlin through Caradoc’s mirror and disclosed the immediate facts. They still weren’t quite sure what happened, only that they’d left behind in their wake the bodies of two dragons, one disturbed nest of mutated mosquitoes (Lancelot still twitched whenever a bug buzzed by), and the remains of some inconveniently placed doors blocking their exit to free flowing air.

After Merlin’d received their message and ordered the usual celebratory fare be replaced with deep mourning, an undercurrent of electric excitement, propelled by curiosity and official silence on the matter, had frizzed through the villagers like a wild firework. Merlin had had to issue a Prohibition on betting who had died. The Prohibition was sternly worded at best, and half-heartedly administered at worst. (The week before the knights returned the top running bets were Arthur, the king, and Bors, the most senior knight. Galahad was a contentious candidate. He merited deep mourning, but surely purest and bravest and truest Galahad hadn’t succumbed to Death?)

It was with a breathed relief when a healthy Galahad returned on Mr Pickles.

A trial was to be held immediately. There had been a short squabble about whether Arthur should be buried with full honours, for on top of accusations of treachery they weren’t sure whether his death counted as dying in battle honourably. The families from whom the apprentices were taken were not of aristocratic lineage. They were a step above the serfs, which meant even the knights couldn’t completely ignore their fury and suspicion that not one of the children had returned alive. 

Thus, Galahad’s trial was attended by rows and rows of villagers with stony expressions on their faces, a gallery filled with lords and ladies, and various anxious diplomatic scum who’d come to Camelot for news about the Holy Grail. 

The jury of Galahad’s peers, comprised of the knights who hadn’t gone on the quest and a handful of the upper crust of Camelot’s nobility, returned a verdict in his favour, though not without condemning him to three years of prayer and quiet reflection.

“Sir Galahad who achieved the Holy Grail,” Kay laughed, later, clapping Harry on the shoulder. “As if we could doubt thy words upon such proof of virtue.”

Merlin had taken Harry aside and asked whether he would have preferred to have done with it by duel, to which Harry replied, “I’d promised someone to continue living.”

“Is this someone of a mystical persuasion?”

Harry frowned at Lancelot, who raised her hands in protest, “I didn’t snitch on you.”

“Never mind,” said Bors, “Percy’s deciding on your new quarters. He seems to think your prayer be better served if you were near a river.”

 

 

*

 

 

Legend goes that Galahad, who achieved the Grail, never aged a day. He stayed on in the quarters Percival assigned for his three years’ rumination, a quiet but comfortable cottage near a rushing river of pellucid waters, and occasionally, sung the more romantic poems, he could be seen conversing quietly with a mer, whose blushing fins would sometimes flick above the water in response to something said.

He remained faithful to Camelot. When younger faces slowly but inexorably took the titles of friends and colleagues who had died in battle or from illness or old age, Galahad requested and was granted leave for a personal quest by the new Arthur. 

With the large and lustrous pearl always worn on the hilt of his sword, Harry closed the door to his modest house, and walked into the woods beyond the fringe of Camelot, under olive-gold rays of sunlight shooting through layered foliage, to the edge of the deep, wide river that flowed into the ocean, where Eggsy lounged on the mossy bank with his hands cushioning his head, quite in the nude, all long, muscled limbs and chiseled chest, smiling idly in the dappled sunlight.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has left kudos, commented, or read this little fic of mine.  
> The response has been overwhelming. It started out as a writing exercise meant to be completed within two hours. Ha! Famous last words. 
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed reading :)

**Author's Note:**

> Updates every Tuesday ;)


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